Ricerc@Sapienza

The development of sustainable liquid transport fuels is essential to guarantee a reduction of the carbon footprint and the future security of energy supply in Europe. As with all industrial processes, production of biofuels requires energy input and has an environmental impact. When measuring the overall sustainability of biofuels, a range of factors need to be taken into account, including competition with food production, the release of stored carbon, and the impact on biodiversity, as land is cleared to grow energy crops. Thus, a carbon-neutral process which uses residual biomass as feedstock for carbon-based fuels that are irreplaceable by electrification, such as aviation fuel, is urgently needed. The current proposal addresses this need.
The production of advanced biofuels from waste lignocellulosic biomass, to be used as alternatives to traditional fuels, is a challenge. In this project we will address the need by developing a process to produce jet fuel from the lignin fraction of biomass. Jet-fuel is composed by linear alkanes, cycloalkanes and aromatics compounds. Nowdays, the feedstock of bio-jet fuel are vegetable oils from which only linear alkanes can be obtained, so a blending with traditional fuel is needed to have the complete range of the jet-fuel compounds. Thus, the goal is to obtain a jet fuel made up not only of alkanes, but also of cycloalkanes and aromatics in order to be used as a direct substitute for a conventional jet fuel. Lignin is the best candidate due its aromatic structure and furthermore, it is the main waste product of second generation bio-ethanol production plants.
To achieve this goal, the project will focus on a novel catalytic hydrothermal liquefaction process and on the development of the appropriate catalysts, which will produce a stable bio-crude, which means low O/C ratio to decrease the oil polarity, which will be a perfect precursor for the production of aromatics and cycloalkanes for bio-jet fuel.